EUROPEAN PREVIEW - SGP LANDSHUT

Image courtesy of Taylor Lanning Photography

Both riders enjoyed their best-ever campaigns last year with Lambert finishing second and Bewley fourth, and both will expect to be amongst the challengers to Bartosz Zmarzlik, who will be chasing an historic fourth successive title and a record-equalling sixth overall.

The 2025 series will be raced over ten rounds and features the Manchester double at Belle Vue on June 13 and 14, with Cardiff and Gorican now off the schedule, whilst the series concludes at Vojens in mid-September with Torun this year hosting the FIM Speedway of Nations rather than a GP round.

Last year’s top six also included Fredrik Lindgren, Martin Vaculik and Jack Holder, and this season it will be the top seven who automatically progress to 2026.

Permanent places in the series were handed to 2024 Landshut winner Mikkel Michelsen, who missed the final two rounds due to injury, former World Champion Jason Doyle who had made a strong start to the season before being injured in May, along with German racer Kai Huckenbeck and the Czech Republic’s Jan Kvech.

The remaining places were taken 2024 Speedway Euro Champion Andzejs Lebedevs, and by the top four from last year’s Grand Prix Challenge.
That meeting was won by Brady Kurtz who promises to be an exciting addition to the SGP field based on his form all over Europe, and it also enabled Anders Thomsen and Max Fricke to book full time returns to the series, and for last year’s eighth-place finisher to Dominik Kubera to confirm his involvement for a second season.

Landshut staged its second GP last year with the first having come way back in 1997. Michelsen was joined in the top four on the night by Zmarzlik, Holder and Kubera, whilst Lambert and Bewley both reached the semi-finals but were eliminated at that stage.

PGE Ekstraliga action takes place on Friday and Sunday with meetings in Round 4, and Lambert has a home meeting the night before the GP as he races for Torun at home to Czestochowa.

The home side will be strong favourites although the visitors did get off the mark last week, and Lambert will come up against Doyle prior to their involvement at Landshut.

Bewley, meanwhile will be racing on Sunday in the most intriguing match of the round as Wroclaw travel to Grudziadz, who have made a terrific start to the season with three wins out of three.

Fricke and Michael Jepsen Jensen form a strong top two for the likes of Bewley, Brady Kurtz and Artem Laguta to face, and the result could provide a further clue as to whether GKM are likely to be serious challengers for the top four this season.

Elsewhere on Friday, champions Lublin will be expected to take care of promoted Rybnik, whilst the other fixture on Sunday features the current bottom two in the table as Gorzow host Zielona Gora in a crunch local derby with both clubs looking in danger of suffering a tough season.

The two remaining Round 3 fixtures in Metalkas 2. Ekstraliga take place across the weekend, starting on Saturday when Rzeszow, with one point from two matches, host Ostrow who have only raced once so far without scoring.

Then on Sunday it’s Lodz, who have lost both matches raced in 2025, at home to Tarnow who are also racing for just the second time.

There are also three matches in the National Speedway League on Sunday, with Adam Ellis lining up for Gniezno at home to Pila who are the only team with a 100 per cent record so far.

Both sides are currently on four points, as are Gdansk and Daugavpils. The Latvian team travel to Krakow who have Richard Lawson at No.1 as they look to get off the mark, whilst Gdansk visit Opole.

Meanwhile there was disappointment for the two British riders involved in Speedway Euro Championship qualifying rounds on Thursday.

Tom Brennan, who raced in the final round of the SEC series at Chorzow last year, was frustratingly close to making it out of his qualifier at Mureck in Austria.

He scored ten points with a last place out of gate four in a tough third race proving costly before he finished with two successive wins to place sixth in the standings.

The meeting was won by Frederik Jakobsen with a 15-point maximum whilst Timo Lahti, Krzysztof Buczkowski and Marko Levishyn also made it to the SEC Challenge.

Elsewhere Ellis, who rode in the main SEC series in 2022 and 20023, finished tenth in the qualifier at Brokstedt, Germany, with six points. The four riders to go through were Patryk Dudek, Vaclav Milik, Nazar Parnitskyi and Rasmus Jensen.

Bartlomiej Kowalski won the Debrecen qualifier with a 15-point maximum and the other top four finishers were Michael Jepsen Jensen, Mateusz Cierniak and Daniel Klima.

There is one more qualifier at Lamothe-Landerron on May 17, before the SEC Challenge at Stralsund in Germany on May 31.